Tuesday, June 14, 2016

Trump Is Unfit To Serve But He May Dog Whistle His Way Into The White House

Donald Trump is easily the most unfit
person to be the presumptive nominee for president for a major political party
in the United States since the two-party system emerged in the mid-1800s.

I could stop there. But I won’t.

Trump is a white supremacist and a xenophobic nativists.
In a supposedly post-racial and culturally tolerant society, these two
“character flaws” should eliminate you from serious consideration to become
president.

However, to many of his supporters who feel like they have been
forced to keep silent about issues involving race and ethnicity due to political
correctness (Trump, on the other hand, is a godsend because he “tells it like
it is”), and Republican Party officeholders such as, Speaker of the House, Paul
Ryan, and Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, who crave control of the
Congress and the White House to advance their reactionary agenda, being a
racist and anti-immigrant are not disqualifiers.

A few more things.

Trump also fails to make sense of
reality through, for example, the use of logic or the establishment and verification
of facts. Nor does he justify his beliefs on the basis of new or existing
evidence.

Instead, the Republican Party’s standard-bearer is opposed to the use
of reason. His thinking is incoherent rather than logical. Depending on the
situation, he just makes up his own facts. And, he does not feel like he needs
to justify his beliefs to anyone but himself.

A reader might accuse me of hyperbole. A few minutes of listening to Trump would change
your mind. Almost every time he gives a speech or an interview, my jaw drops
and I’m left nearly speechless.

Here are a few examples of nearly everything
I have just laid out. Let’s talk a little about Trump's use of white identity politics.The statement, "Make America great
again," is really code words to appeal to whites on the basis of their
white identity. Lots of white people love Trump for saying it.

But, who are these people? The
typical Trump supporter has less than a college education, is male, and earns
less than 50,000. Certainly, Trump appeals to them in part because he taps into their economic
anxieties and the failure of the political class to solve their problems.

But,
Trump also connects to them on the basis of their racial and ethnic anxieties
and prejudices. To put this into perspective, we must also take a look at how demographic trends are changing America and the fear this is creating among whites.

The
share of the nation’s population that is white is shrinking. The reason is
twofold: most immigrants are not white; most children born in the country are
not white.

The demographic changes have triggered
an existential crisis for many white Americans and driven them toward Trump. His supporters say things like:

“Take American back.”

“This is not the same country I grew up
in.”

“This country has gone to hell.”

“This country is going to hell.”

Trump’s race baiting plays to the deep
hostility on the part of a significant number of white Americans to the
demographic changes that are browning America.

Many Trump supporters also link the idea of
being "American" with being white. The presumptive nominee knows
this.

Following the horrific murder of 49
people in Orlando, Donald Trump said at a press conference, "The killer
was born an Afghan, of Afghan parents who immigrated to the United
States." This was not a slip of the tongue or ignorance about where he was
born.

Trump knows exactly where Omar Mateen was
born. That the media keeps saying Trump is stupid because Mateen was born in
Queens NYC like him is just plain silly.

Trump was using his dog whistle,
suggesting that because his parents were not American citizens at the time of
his birth, that Mateen was an Afghan not an American citizen as the 14th
Amendment guarantees anyone born in the United States. (I actually don't think
he would even consider the children of naturalized citizens from non-European
countries real Americans; he equates being an American with a set of values and
racially identity that originates in Europe.)

The media can't bring themselves to
acknowledge just how deeply racists and nativist Trump's campaign really is and will be of little help. On the other
hand, many of his hardcore supporters understand where their candidate is coming
from. This is why they plan to vote for him and he might just succeed.